Transcription

Welcome back to the Composition Madhouse where imitation is mastery brought to you by Foster Light Studios and this week will learn all about complexification. In our last video we were looking at the nine ways to simplify your composition and we were looking at that because we saw in this graph right here that the entire life and progression of a photographer is encapsulated in two stages. The first stage is learning how to move from a simple snapshot where you have just tons of junk in your image to simplify it down through nine steps, nine different ways to a simple more elegant image. The second step is this stage of complexification. This week we're going to look at how you complexity your image. When we're talking about how to complexity your image there's really two questions that we need to address: the first one is what am I complexifying and the second one is what is complexifying. So first question, what am I complexifying, I know you may think well this is obvious-I'm complexifying my image, like the picture I'm taking. That's true but a further distinction needs to be made because every image is fundamentally broken up into two parts and we call those various different things. Sometimes you call them figure or ground, or the subject and the background because that's kind of how we think about it. We don't normally use the terms and everyday parlance: figure and ground.

Your subject is just the main thing you're taking a picture of so typically people but if you're taking a picture of still life its fruit or you're taking pictures of animals it's the animal and then the background is whatever is behind it. The first question you need to answer is what am I complexifying, which part my image do I want to complexity. Do I want to complexify the subject of the image, the person or the animal. After you've decided which part of the image you want a complexify you've got to decide how do I want to complexify.

There's a distinction that we need to understand that is that there's two kinds of complexification. There's two questions as two stages two things you always have to answer when you are ready to complexify your image and the two types of complexification are quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative complexification is simply the first stage of adding something else into your image, you're adding another subject. If you're taking a picture of one person complexification would be adding another person into the image, another subject or another object. Typically you'll see this if you're taking a picture of a couple or a person and you'll balance them on on the other side of the image with something else which can complement or contrast that thing. Quantitative complexification is where you are deciding how many additional subjects how many additional focal points that you want to add in. For every subject, that will be a place where the eye stops in the composition. You look at the main subject first, if it's designed well, then you look at the second second and your eye will be drawn around each of these nodes, each of these subjects in the image.

After you decide how many additional things, how many additional subjects you want in your image, then you have to decide what will be the character of that thing what will be the quality of that additional thing and they're fundamentally only five ways five qualities that you can use to complexity your image: shape, color, luminance that we often called brightness, size, and its texture. After you've decided that you want to add in one additional subject to this image you then have to answer the question how do I want to add it and what is the character, what is the nature, what is the visual nature of this additional thing.

What will its be its shape: that is to say, is it going to be triangular or rectilinear is it going to be curvy, is it going to be sharp or is it going to be have soft edge,s what is its color is it going to be, orange or yellow or blue, is it going to be very saturated or is it going to be desaturated, you can deal with its luminance, so will this additional thing be very bright are very dark or some somewhere in the middle, what size will it be especially compared to the other thing. So will the two subjects be balanced in terms of their size will be the same size one be very large and very small and then the texture, so what what is the internal texture or character - their lines, their shapes, is it noisy, is it not noisy, is a calm, is it reserved.

And all of these five get mixed and matched and fascinating ways that make the image have wonderful contrast and hierarchy and order. All of these things are very abstract and I want to look at a few images and see how this plays out. The next 60 videos are going to be all different techniques about how you mix and match these five characters to develop different complex beautiful image.

The first example I want to look at is this image right here. If you think about how this image started so I was using flash here there's two flashes being used here and if you think about what it looked like when their room is in here it was just a normal evenly lit room. So it didn't look anything like this when we started.

The first step is always to simplify. If you remember from the video on simplification techniques, I used one angling so I got low and shot up a bit to chop out everything in the bottom and I used hard light or luminance used by external flash so that I would just see what I want to namely her and this mirror. And I used filling the flame. So I used those three techniques to get everything out of the picture that I don't want.

In the next step, to make it an even more fascinating image I wanted to complexify it. I complexified it by including a few additional elements. Remember, the first step in complexifying is the quantitative question, that is, how many additional subjects am I going to add in, and in this image there's two—there's this mirror that she's holding up and there is the window. When we're talking about how many subjects there are we’re talking visually in terms of design—how many different focal points, how many different nodes does your eyes stop at. Sometimes it's not exactly clear but here we have three. So I decided the first question, the quantitative question, I wanted to add in two additional items.

I complexified it by matching the luminance, the light levels with the flash with the outside window and to complex about this image I used shape so there's this repeating curve of the top of this window with this mirror here which is similar to the curve of the bride's had right there so we have a similarity of repetition and shape. We have complexity used with color so we have this blue and this green outside here and that's nice because it has quantitative value because this was a Florida wedding so you get some of those colors in there which reminds us of the location in terms of texture the tree outside has a very distinct texture which adds complexity and a nice character to this image.

So you can see by the use of shape by the use of color luminance and texture and that this added much more complexity than if the simply if you took out that and you just had a picture of her sitting in the chair. This is more fascinating because your eye is drawn around the composition.

In the second image here, this is a silhouette and so the first step is to simplify your image. I simplified this image by two techniques and that is by using silhouette. When you silhouette that means that it will typically be a very dark scene so by its very nature that the things will be taken out. The second technique is angling. I am standing up on a chair very close to this lamp and I'm angling as high as I possibly can to get everything lower the dance floor is actually between me and them and so I'm gonna get out all those people that the djs lights are shining on and so I'm angling up very very high with a wide-angle lens.

The next question is well how many additional things do I want. I decided that I wanted one additional thing to complexify this image so the quantitative question is I wanted to add one other thing and that other thing this chandelier right here.

We have simplified the image and we’re done with the first step. The next question is the character or nature of this complexity. I used a couple of techniques. The main technique is with color—this is a complementary color palette so on a color wheel, and this is a very often used technique and in graphic design as well as in photography, I take two opposite colors which complement each other which go well together on the color wheel.

Blue and orange are opposite on the color wheel and so I decided I want this to be a balanced composition by having a blue part an orange part. These lights are tungsten and I took a flash and I gelled it blue and stuck it behind them so that I could capture that silhouette and that i would get this complementary color palette. I also used a texture here so the light has a nice internal complexity, these repeating circles which is very pleasing.

In our last image we're going to look at, the first step is simplification as always. And I did that by two techniques: one is by angling, so I got low and shot up to cut out all the people speed in the dance floor and everything and to make sure that my subjects pop up against the people who are behind them to make them be more prominent as well as illuminance so i'm using external flash here to flash them to make sure they're brighter than everything else so after that I could have been very tight and just have them in but I wanted a more complex more beautiful image. In this image I decided to complexity by both the subject and the background.

First I complexified the background by changing the luminance so I put the flash on the lowest setting possible boosted my iso up so that i could get some of the texture of that background because I didn't want to go completely black, I wanted to see some of the of the texture and the color of of the sky coming in. I complexified the subject by adding in these string of lights and so that's using shape it's using both its shape in terms of these these little strings of these ball lights as well as these nice lines they're creating which is balancing the top and the bottom half of the composition because you have a line of people at the bottom and then you have this nice line at the top and I'm doing it by luminance because I matching the luminance of the lights up there with the luminance of our subjects. There's a balance and luminance and so you have nice repetition the color also balances because you have them, who are very warm color, and the lights that are that are very warm color so when you come out of this image if you were to just be punched in tight on our couple like this it's a nice image but it's much nicer and more elegant and beautiful and flows better if you're like this and background is more complex and you have the string of lights which gives us two places to look at in this image.

Thanks for watching this week, guys. Check back next week we're going to have a video about luminance complexification and how to do a unique techniques with shadows. Please, like, subscribe, and share this if you know any photographer might be interested.

Transcription

This week, we are going to chart out the entire life of a photographer.

What's up, welcome back to the Composition Madhouse, last week we were talking about photography and design and about how one of the main reasons why we've got this weird obsessions with gear when it really doesn't matter is that photographers don't typically study design. And in photography that's hard, it's just design. So, if photography is just like design, then what's the difference? Well, the main difference between photography and design is the starting point. The starting point of most types of photography is subtraction where the starting point of graphic design is addition. So, think about what actually happens. If you're a graphic designer, you open up Illustrator and you've got a blank slate. You may have a few design elements, a palette or a logo or something, but you start generally blank. And you start adding things into that palette. And you start adding things into that blank slate. When most people start off with photography, you go into a party or a family gathering, and there's just stuff everywhere. If you think about that party as a visual composition, and you start taking it apart, you can see that there's all sorts of disparate shapes, and lines, and directions and colors and temperatures and all of these things that take stuff out.

This week, we're specifically going to talk about two things. First, we're going to talk about the two main stages that every single photographer goes through to become great. Normally when people first start getting into photography, something happens like this. They see online or they see someone's pictures and they think it's super cool. And they think that, "Wow, what I really need is to get a nice camera." So they go and they do a bunch of research and they drop a few hundred dollars on a nice camera, and they start taking pictures and there is this immediate high of, "Wow. That looks incredible." But, soon thereafter, they come and they realize that, "My pictures aren't that good. I mean, they're marginally better, and we all know that's just because of a bigger sensor and a nicer lens, but they're not really that much better." So what do we do? Well, we either search online or we take a photography class or something like this and the photographer, the teacher starts telling us, "You need to have a subject in your photos, you need to be taking a picture of something. Why don't you fill the frame with something?"

So, you go out and you start doing those things. You start filling your frame with whatever it is you're taking a picture of, you make sure you've got a subject. And that's awesome. You look at your pictures and you think, "This is a million times better than anything I've been doing before." And then the same thing happens again, is that you feel like, "Well, there's got to...I look at these dude and they've got great, great, amazing work, and I look at mine and it's cool, but not that good." So, to get a little better handle on the progression of a photographer, what do I actually have to do to become a better photographer? The entire progression of a photographer look just like this. Every photographer, in their progression to master their skill, there is two main stages.

The first stage is simplification. The second stage is complexification. What's that stuff about? When you first start taking photos, you normally go to a party or you go to a family gathering, or you enter a room or you go into a park and you take a photo and there is just crap everywhere. If you think in terms of simply design, you've got tons of different shapes and different sizes and different colors, and different textures and it's just a smattering of design elements that aren't harmonious, that don't have a flow, that don't have a balance to it. So, the first step is always simplification. Simplifying the composition. The first step to becoming a great photographer is learning all the ways to simplify a composition. In the next video, we're going to look at all of the ways to simply a composition. There is nine, and there is only nine. After you master those nine, of course it takes a lifetime to master those, but you can get a good handle after a few years.

After you master those nine ways to simplify a composition, the next step is to complexify the composition. Now, before we talk about complexifications, we've got to get some definitions on board here, because simplification and complexification aren't exactly what you think they are. Simplicity is not just a reduced number of visual elements. Not having a bunch of subjects or not having a bunch of visual elements. Simplicity is two things. Negatively, it is not having anything extraneous in the photo. Negatively, a simple composition is not having very few things in it, but it is not having any extraneous visual elements or subjects. Not having things in the composition that shouldn't be. A simple composition doesn't necessarily mean there's very few subjects. So negatively, it means there is not extra stuff in there, and positively, a simple composition means a composition where the elements in there are properly ordered. That they are harmonious. That there is a narrative to them.

That there is a proper relation between those two things. So the next video is going to be about all the means of simplification. In the next 60 videos after that, those are all going to be about complexification, and all the ways to complexify a composition. So, when we talk about making a composition more complex, we are not saying that it ceases to be simple. In the words of Neal Plantinga, he said, "There is a simplicity that is past complexity, but yet that includes it." I'll say it again. "There is a simplicity past complexity that includes it." And what does that mean in visual composition? In visual composition, that means that though you have additional visual elements or subjects, they are all properly ordered, there's a harmony, a flow, a rightness about those relations. Many of the great painters will construct their compositions in a way that there is a visual entrance into the composition or a multiple and then you are lead around, by means of composition, through the whole piece, and then you can exit.

So if simple composition is superior, why would you complexify it? Well, two analogies. First musical. If you play one note, it's perfectly lovely. But, if you start adding in notes, two, three, four, six. There starts to be relationships between the notes to bring out textures and colors and dynamics that you didn't experience before. Or think about a story. You can have a story about one person. And it can be interesting. But when you start adding a boyfriend, a mother, a grandfather, they are specific characters and they start interacting in different ways. Grandfather to daughter. Daughter to mother. Mother to stepson. All of these different relationships start bringing out the beauty and the redemption or ugliness of that narrative and so it is with visual composition. You complexify it because you can bring a higher order of beauty when you start to bring together these different visual elements and subjects and colors and shapes together that you couldn't have with one element. Thanks so much for stopping by this week. Stay tuned because in next week we're going to look at all of the nine ways to simplify your compositions.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Composition Madhouse, where imitation is mastery, brought to you by Foster Light Studios. My name is John Higgins and this week, we're going to learn to master anything. If you want to be great at anything, you've got to know how to be great at anything and it's actually quite simple. You find the masters and you imitate them.

Unfortunately for many years, from when we were very young, we were taught that we should strive to be original. The problem is that if you want to be original, you can't try to be original. In "The Academy," C.S. Lewis talked about how PhD programs are setup really are nonsensical. For you to get a PhD in any discipline, you have to contribute a unique piece of scholarship.

Unfortunately we are relying upon the youngest and most inexperienced people to produce the most original work. If you really want to be original, you don't try to be original. You master the masters. You imitate the masters and one day, you will wake up and find you are original.

All original compositions, pieces of art, are simply from past works divided up and recombined in different ways. Solomon was right when he said that there's nothing new under the sun. And if you haven't seen it, there's a great video that you can check out called "Everything is a Remix," which is talking about this very thing. One of the greatest guitar players alive today, his name is Tuck Andress, and in a video you can see here, he discusses how he mastered his craft.

Tuck would go to the library and get an album by Art Tatum. If you've never heard Art Tatum, he is one of the most insane and greatest jazz piano players of all time. And he played fast, really fast. And Tuck would go to the library and he would get albums by Art Tatum. He would play them and he would slow them down and he would copy, he would imitate, and he would master those solos on guitar. That's how you master anything.

One great contemporary example of this is Roberto Valenzuela. In many of his books on teaching, he talks about how photographers never practice. If you ask most photographers, "When do you practice," or, "How many hours do you practice," they'll normally tell you, "Oh, I had my last wedding a week ago." And he says, "No, no, no, no. That's performance, not practice." He used to be a professional classical guitarist and he would practice hours and hours and hours and hours and he took that into his craft. If you don't know the best photographers in your type of photography, both living and dead, you've got to find that out.

Here at the Composition Madhouse, we're going to be talking about some of the greatest photographers alive today. And I will tell you who they are. So here's your homework for this week. Find the five greatest photographers in the world. And no, that isn't subjective. Beauty is real. Beauty is a real feature of the world. Aesthetic properties are objective. They exist in the world. And you are either a poor photographer, a medium photographer, or a great photographer. If you want to master anything, you need to copy, copy, copy.

It has been a goal of mine for some time to start teaching on composition, the heart of great photography. After many months of planning, I have begun. I have the next year planned for teaching intermediate and advanced composition and design. Without futher ado: Introduction to the Composition Madhouse:

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Composition Madhouse, where imitation is mastery. Brought to you Foster Light Studios. My name is John Higgins, and this first episode, we're going to get mad at gearheads and get down with design.

In this first episode, I want to talk to you about what the Composition Madhouse is. I think many people had the experience of when they first got into photography, they were trying to get better, they were trying to understand what this whole thing was about, so they started scouring the internet and they looked on blogs and on websites. But the problem is that many times when you're trying to figure something out, simply the questions and the conversations that are already going on aren't the main things that are going to make you a better photographer.

And when you start listening in on these conversations, the thing that I was amazed at was that so many of the conversations were about gear, just gear heaven. And so naturally, I thought that, "Man, to be a really good photographer, I've got to know about gear." But as any good photographer will tell you, gear accounts for a very, very small percentage of what it means to be a photographer. It's incredible to me when you look at all of the major photography sites and the types of content that they're putting out.

Just a few months ago, I saw a very, very large photography vendor put out a review, a video review, on a lens that had been out for 5, 6, 7 years. It was unbelievable. I remember after the Blackhawks won the World Cup, I was sitting waiting for the parade to come by and there were two younger guys sitting next to me and they saw that I had a nice camera and a long lens, and naturally one of their first questions is, "What do you shoot, Nikon or Canon?" I've been asked this question many times and I say the same thing every time: it doesn't matter. And naturally, when I say that, everyone is shocked and they say, "I've never heard someone say that before."

No one, no matter how good a photographer, can look at any photograph and tell you what camera or what lens it's on. So, there's tons of resources on things that won't make you a great photographer, but very few resources on the things that actually will. What really matters in being a good photographer is composition. And when I say composition, I mean composition including light and posing as well because that's part of the visual organization of the frame. What you really need to master and spend your life learning if you want to be a great photographer is composition.

The problem is that when I was searching for a place for people to really learn from and master composition, I didn't find anything. What you do find with composition is you find a lot of introductory material. Time and time again, you see tutorials and you see lessons on leading line, rule of thirds, but once you've mastered that, you get this desire, "I want to know more. I want to master composition." The Composition Madhouse is about mastering composition. How many times can you review one lens? Honestly. The Composition Madhouse is about intermediate and advanced composition. It's about mastering composition.

What we're going to be doing here at the Composition Madhouse is we're going to be looking at the greatest photographers, breaking down their photographs into all their compositional principles, intermediate to advanced, imitate them so that we might become masters.

So, starting next week, episode two of the Composition Madhouse, we're going to talk about how to master anything.

Thanks for stopping in today. Please remember to give me a thumbs up, share and subscribe. We're going to be having one video every week. I'd love to see you come back.